David Gentilcore's Food and Health in Early Modern Europe … does an excellent job of evaluating how the medical philosophers of the time viewed food and how that may have influenced consumers.… [it] is an interesting read, thoughtful, dense, and thoroughly detailed, making it a good reference piece.

Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies

Gentilcore profitably sketches the shifts from the revived Galenism of the late Middle Ages ... to the rational embrace of moderation in all things by the great Bath doctor George Cheyne in Georgian England ... All this is covered with gusto and not a little scholarship.

Times Literary Supplement

Well written, richly illustrated and a must-read for anyone interested in the history of food and medicine. Furthermore, his study is very neatly linked to similar studies on medicine and consumption.

European Review of History

Social history done well (unequivocally the case here) is a pleasure to read. Views of food, medicine, and societal practice confected in the cauldron of Europe's early modern period could easily, in less scholarly and competent hands, have produced a concoction intellectually difficult to digest. The author's recipe for avoiding this is simple but skillfully executed. Two initial chapters divide the period surveyed (c.1450–c.1650; c.1650–c.1800) to clarify the shifting views of diet and medicine. In brief, the revival of Galen's emphasis on dietary regimen and prevention (renascent as a result of humanism) is eventually challenged by iatrochemical (Paracelsian) and iatromechanical views emphasizing therapeutics and curative drugs. These views are, by the end of this diachronic survey, countered by a return to a dietetics again based on hygiene and prevention. With this foundation established, subsequent chapters explore the interaction of these ideas with changing views of social rank, religion, vegetarianism, beverage consumption, and the appearance of new foods and drinks associated with the Columbian exchange. It would be difficult to imagine any undergraduate student, irrespective of major, who could leave unsated from this intellectual feast. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

CHOICE

Gentilcore brings together food history and the history of medicine in a thoroughly engaging and – despite its period – incongruously topical book ... Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is an excellent resource for both students and academics interested in diet, medicine and early modern Europe more generally ... Gentilcore has a firm command of the material, which is presented in a humorous, appealing style that I would welcome from more historians. A thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding read.

Medical History

An excellent book! Well-written, it has a logical structure and strong arguments. Its particular strengths are the European perspective, the careful analysis of discourses, the many and telling quotations, and the systematic attention to regional and social differences. This book is an eminent and original contribution to food historiography.

Peter Scholliers, Professor of History and FOST (Social & Cultural Food Studies), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium